Dietary slip-up: cold pizza

So, the pizza was hanging out on the counter, waiting for Dad to pop it in the oven because Mom only will eat hot pizza...what a principessa!

I don't mind cold pizza. In fact, it was delicious.

Herein I detail my dietary slip-ups of the past month and hope that they haven't affected inordinately my restricted ingredient diet.

To wit:
1 rawhide bone, found on the street, in almost perfect condition. Not only nutritional, but you can play with it, too!

2 slices pizza with carmelized onions and fresh mozzarella (served cold)

1 or 2 milkbones scammed from my neighbor Hank (he loves me)

1 or 2 unidentified bones, also scammed, this time from the mail carrier (he's new and hasn't yet found my insistent charm to be annoying. The previous mail carrier, after I extracted my first bone payment, took to either 1) ignoring me or 2) avoiding me by turning down any available street just as I trotted by.)

Another lousy report card

“Another lousy report card.”

That’s what Mom said last week when Dad arrived home. He thought she was talking about my sister. No such luck; she’s too good a student. C’est moi, again.

Sigh.

Each week my pal Kelly writes up some notes on our time together, with her deft, often humorous touch. But lately the reports have become gloomier and gloomier. Mom no longer brags to her colleagues about the depth and perspicacity of these missives, as she did when they were brighter and filled with laudatory adjectives.

Here, in confession, are some excerpts. Most of my transgressions have to do with my famed obdurate streak.

“Do you have any suggestions for when his stubbornness gets that out of control? More and more he has been trying to be the one in charge.”

“I literally had to drag him up the hill…but we finally made it back home with the help of a few milkbones…Right now he is out back, napping in his dirt pile. Hopefully I can convince him to come back in.”

“I dumped out all my milkbones and was pulling pretty  hard, but he was not budging for anything or anyone…Basically I dragged him around for a half hour…at least he used up a lot of energy pulling in the opposite direction.”

“He is giving me that look of ‘I’ve had a successful day so far and would like you to give me that bag of milkbones because I am awesome and in charge.’”

“Thank goodness it didn’t rain today! (That was the first thing I thought about this morning—whether or not I would be able to get Tucker to go outside!) Alas, it didn’t go much better today than it went last week…I had to stand at the bottom of the stairs and open and close the cream cheese container a few times before he considered coming down…We only made it one house down the road. I used milkbones to convince him to go about 50 yards further, but that was the best I could do. He refused to budge.”

My report this week actually was decent. Now that I’m on triple secret probation, Mom says it’s time to turn things around. She’s almost as stubborn as I am, so it's going to be quite a battle.

I'm on a diet! Horrors!

So I went to my favorite vet, Dr. Schettino at VCA in Westboro, and he didn't weigh me even though I have become a bit rotund (Barry at the Wellesley Booksmith says he empathizes). My main squeeze understands the poundage issue because I've been on medication for a rather personal problem, and it made me extraordinarily hungry. Quite frankly, I've been eating a ton.

Anyway, the medication worked—great, right? Except that due to that success, Dr. S. thinks my problem was caused by an allergy. I'm on a severely restricted diet—severely! to see if that's the case. Mom cast a skeptical eye at me when he warned, "Everybody has to be on board with this. No table food. No stealing meatballs off the counter." Well, even though he didn't refer to the meatball extravaganza specifically, we all were thinking it.

Here's the deal: for two months, two months! only Royal Canin (what is with the lack of an "e" in that name?) potato and venison or potato and rabbit. Dr. S. gave me both to try out. Out of respect for my bunny brothers, Licorice and Nutmeg, I voted no on the rabbit combo. I am sure they will be most appreciative of my restraint.

Even my treats have to be made of the stuff, which, fortunately, I'm crazy about. Mom had to experiment with making them out of the wet food. Using a melon baller, she managed to form meatball-like treats (that is, if one stretches one's imagination exponentially), then set the convection oven a tad too high, but I loved them anyway. She's used to concocting finer stuff for Dreams du Dog, so I cut her some slack.

Halloween howliday

Boy, did I need that extra hour of sleep last night! I had a whoop-de-do Halloween that knocked me out a bit early, still wearing my cape.

I surprised everybody by agreeing to wear a costume; moreover, I greeted our first trick-or-treater, a five- year-old in a dinosaur costume who fortunately has two beastly dogs of his own, with an all-out unearthly howl. It was awesome. Then, when he was leaving, I grabbed his dinosaur tail.

I’ve come a long way since my terrified encounter last year with my neighbor’s vampire lemonade-blood stand. Here I am acting rather vampirish myself toward an unsuspecting trick-or-treater.

Did you check out Tilly’s haunted house? I didn’t, but I took a long, slow look at the field full of life-size pumpkin people. It took me a while to get comfortable, but before long I was pulling off their wigs and hats with aplomb. Unmasked, or rather, unbewigged, they weren’t really that scary.